GULLIVER’S ESCAPE

By Jonathan Swift

I had always a strong impulse that I should sometime recover my liberty, though it was impossible to conjecture by what means, or to form any project with the least hope of succeeding.  The ship in which I sailed was the first ever known to be driven within sight of that coast, and the king had given strict orders that if at any time another appeared, it should be taken ashore, and with all its crew and passengers brought in a tumbril to Lorbrulgrud.  I was indeed treated with much kindness; I was the favorite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole court; but it was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of humankind.  I could never forget those domestic pledges I had left behind me.  I wanted to be among people with whom I could converse upon even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without being afraid of being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy.  But my deliverance came sooner than I expected, and in a manner not very common; the whole story and circumstances of which I shall faithfully relate.

I had now been two years in this country, and about the beginning of the third, Glumdalclitch and I attended the king and queen in a progress to the south coast of the kingdom.  I was carried as usual in my traveling box, which, as I have already described, was a very convenient closet of twelve feet wide.  And I had ordered a hammock to be fixed by silken ropes from the four corners at the top, to break the jolts when a servant carried me before him on horseback, as I sometimes desired; and would often sleep in my hammock, while we were upon the road.  On the roof of my closet, not directly over the middle of the hammock, I ordered the joiner to cut out a hole of a foot square, to give me air in hot weather as I slept; which hole I shut at pleasure, with a board that drew backwards and forwards through a groove.

When we came to our journey’s end, the king thought proper to pass a few days at a palace he hath near Flanflasnic, a city within eighteen English miles of the seaside.  Glumdalclitch and I were much fatigued,—­I had gotten a small cold, but the poor girl was so ill as to be confined to her chamber.  I longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene of my escape, if ever it should happen.  I pretended to be worse than I really was, and desired leave to take the fresh air of the sea, with a page I was very fond of, and who had sometimes been trusted with me.  I shall never forget with what unwillingness Glumdalclitch consented, nor the strict charge she gave the page to be careful of me, bursting at the same time into a flood of tears, as if she had some foreboding of what was to happen.  The boy took me out in my box, about half an hour’s walk from the palace towards the rocks on the seashore.  I ordered him to set me down, and, lifting up one of my sashes, cast many a wistful, melancholy look towards the sea.  I found myself not very well, and told